Actually inspired by a post of
@mothematics in our sister White Wolf's World of Darkness thread, I have recently started a game of Exalted which our very first session has taken place in just this Friday. The game is set in my rewrite of Lookshy and starts out as a mortal game, inspired by
@EarthScorpion's successful use of similar for his own In the Rose Garden. In the hope that one of my players gives an accurate summary of the session which definitely does not end up favouring their own character immensely while portraying the rest as idiots (they are
all my idiots <3), I have decided to give the set-up here.
Forum and Garland Gone takes place in Realm Year 753. In the northeasternmost of Lookshy's Exarchates, that of Methoi Mekhaloi, our players are juveniles and children of Lookshy, children of the noble gentes Vilikha, Afia and Tomaria. They are all of them associated with the theme of
Orimóita, with which they are currently marching. Not long ago, merely weeks in fact, a large revolt of helots was just put down by the efforts of the standing army. The theme
Orimóita is simply sent there to stabilize the region and ensure all things pass as they properly should. They will also very soon find that things do not always pass as they are supposed to. Now, the characters:
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@Gargulec) Dia Tomaria Pistia. A girl of the age of 15 or 16. Dia is a strange girl, always concerned with matters esoteric and demonic. Timid and with a mind that is often other places, she nonetheless does her best to live up to the military legacy of her family, with which she feels little identification. Simple garments, straight back and decisive gestures, the marks of a child of her family, her mother and father would see her learn discipline in the army and do her family proud, a future which she is exceedingly uninterested in. The highest love in her life is the foreign and the distant, the hill over which men dare not tread. Dia is a dreamer and her many dreams inevitably turn to Hell. Despite her behaviour, unbecoming of a warrior and scion of Lookshy, she is nonetheless a brave girl and holds hidden depths of will, of which she is often uncredited. She is sister to Ekhidna and scared of Navona.
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@mothematics) Navona Afia Sarantankous. 17 years of age but proud as a woman of 30. Navona comes from a family lacking in great deeds of splendour and even more lacking for money and wealth, but oh, she is Lookshyan, she will let anyone know that. Proud and commandeering, she dreams of marching through foreign cities and treading the barbarians at the gates beneath her feet. She dreams in equal measure of marching through Lookshy herself, a triumph in her honour and trumpeteers signaling her coming. And if she can have her way, her big sister Althea will be there to witness it and envy at Navona's prowess. She adores all things Lookshyan and of her gens, although it is up to the question how much of this display of power and strength is performative in nature and how much is true. Has for now reached a semi-tenuous relationship of mutual rivalry and friendship, or definitely something resembling it, with Ekhidna.
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@Omicron) Ekhidna Tomaria Paradoxida. A girl of the age of 15 or 16. Ekhidna is a strange girl, not quite understanding of the intricacies of people's hearts. Often quiet but unafraid to take a stand, Ekhidna is apprenticed to the Listener Geryon, who is her teacher in martial arts and the ways of the Water Dragon. She wears simple garments, clean and austere, the marks of Tomaria, combined with little jewelry, making her seem almost like one of lesser birth. She is rarely seen without her pet, an esoteric creature of segmented plates and small mandible; the trilobite Isotelus. Ekhidna is a smart girl, her ability to understand the world around her is acute and one of her greatest skills, but her inability to understand emotion and passion has always been a weak spot for her. Caught between the fact that she will likely not become any great Listener, her sense of duty and willingness to do what her family thinks best and her albeit frustrated love for her sister Dia, Ekhidna is in a precarious place.
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@Pale Wolf) Thalia Tomaria Meletia. The very youngest at the age of 14. Oh, life has not treated you well, has it Thalia? You were supposed to be so full of promise, such a shining light of a natural-born leader, Encrypted at a young age and expected to rise above her peers, she proceeded to do her best possible social interpretation of an anvil with paper wings attached, free-fall. Thin and lean, as if she is starving more than eating what she needs, Thalia rarely shows emotion or what she thinks without being asked first. In many ways a perfect child of her militaristic family, her greatest flaw is what her family exalts as its greatest strength; a moralistic sense of judgement with which it looks down on its peer gentes. Unfortunately, Thalia's Encryption saw her meet the helotry and see the fields outside the City of Cities, ever an avid student of morality, she found herself unable to follow the orders given to her and now stands in the unenviable place of the 14-year-old reformist.
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@Spear) Opiter Vilikhon Cinnon. Undoubtedly the only peer to Navona's age at 17. The gens of Vilikha is said to bear the blood of giants, and Opiter's tall stature certainly shows that; proud and vain, he eagerly tends his colourful and braided hair with the expectation that people will notice. His sense of complacent happiness in his own station is only exceeded by his utter laziness, there is more to Opiter than meets the eye at first. Bitterness colours his feelings about his family, bitterness at not being allowed to live life according to his whims, bitterness at the united front it presents and the stark contrast with the disunited reality. Had Opiter his way, he would be allowed to make a life of medicine interspersed with enjoyment of that nectar of humanity; wine. His parents wish to see a future of Opiter in the Archontic Conclave, proud speeches and smiles mixed with expert oratory and wily gifts of speech. Unfortunately there is one problem; Opiter himself considers politics to bore him to tears.
